Gossip Girl season 1 episode 3 review: Where is this going?

Spotted:  After this week’s episode, “Lies Wide Shut,” we’re a third of the way through the first season of the Gossip Girl reboot, which begs the question–where exactly is this going?

I want to preempt this week’s review with another comparison to the original series. Gossip Girl premiered in the fall of 2008 in the heyday of maximalist television with a total of 18 episodes.

At the same point in the original’s first season, we would have had six episodes under our belt, double the episodes to get a sense of what’s happening. While shorter TV seasons are becoming the norm, they also have to still be able to tell an economic story.

In other words, while the original had more room to get where it was going, the reboot has to get there much faster. At this point, we should have a clear picture of who these characters are and what the thesis statement of the new Gossip Girl is. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any viewer who could do either.

It’s loosely my job to analyze and describe what happened in this week’s episode to you, but the problem is, not much did. Zoya and Julien mostly took a backseat for other drama, namely Max’s multiple relational dynamics, and the potential outing of Gossip Girl.

While there had been preemptive criticism of Max Wolfe (Thomas Doherty) for seemingly being a revamped pansexual Chuck Bass, for me personally, he’s one of the few compelling characters in the series. (And it appears I’m not alone.)

While Max is a highly sexual creature who parties and has money, that’s about where the similarities end. This week’s episode gave us insight into his home life, one of my favorite moments of the series so far.

While he’d previously alluded to his dads, we got to meet them, allowing us to learn why Max is as messy and chaotic emotionally with his relationships as he is. It’s not that they are unloving and unstable, but rather that Max is perceptive and has picked up on the issues between his parents, which one of his dads has no clue about.

Watching Max ping pong between people, breaking them up, telling them the truth, and use each other to do it was the first glimpse of Gossip Girl DNA we’ve gotten that wasn’t entirely surface-level.

(And the absolute camp and delight of his father, Gideon (Todd Almond) attempting to sit down to dinner in couture Alexander McQueen was a delicious cherry on top.)

By the episode’s end, I found myself completely won over by Max, something I can’t say for anyone else on the show at this point. Last week, I briefly mentioned Max’s ongoing pursuit of one of his teachers. I’m on record as not having been a fan.

And yet, this week, the emotional payoff was there. Teacher-student relationships have been done to death a thousand times, but after Max had been stripped bare, having alienated his friends and family, seeing Mr. Caparros (Jason Gotay) kindly offer him a place to sleep on the couch was genuinely sweet.

I’m still not shipping them, but I am here for their dynamic, especially if it allows Max to be vulnerable.

All this to say, I really don’t know what this new Gossip Girl is about, but I’ll be tuning in to see what Max will do next.

Until then, XOXO.

What did you think of this week’s episode of Gossip Girl? Make sure to tell us in the comments below!